This storming party, provided with boards and rails to bridge the ditch outside the stockade when they got to it, led the advance or attacking column. And while we stood in line breathlessly awaiting the order to move forward ourselves, I watched that little force of 150 men rush forward towards the battlements of the enemy. How they scurried forward, leaping over the logs and brush lying in their pathway as they pushed on through that leaden and iron hail of death! A scattering few seemed to reach the salient of the bastion and laid down against their works in time to preserve their lives, but as it appeared to me through the clouds of sulphurous smoke a greater part of the blue forms were scattered along their line of advance stretched upon the earth motionless in death. It had come our turn now to face the lead, and we were ordered to fix bayonets. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. CHARGE OF MAY 22D. WHILE waiting the charge of the storming party and watching their progress across the field to the enemy's works, I noticed a group of general officers close to our left, composed of Grant, Sherman and Giles A. Smith, with their field glasses, watching the little storming party painting a trail of blood across that field. Those distinguished commanders, unlike ourselves, were standing behind large trees, and squinted cautiously out to the right and left, exposing as little of their brass buttons as possible, and I think I saw them dodge a couple of times. I thought of the convincing speech the officer made to his command on the eve of the battle, when he assured them that he might be killed himself, as some balls would go through the biggest trees. General Ewing's brigade led the assault after the storming party had sped their bolts, and advanced along the crown of an interior ridge which partially sheltered his advance. This command actually entered the parapet of the enemy's works at a shoulder of the bastion, but when the enemy rose up in double ranks and delivered its withering fire his forces were swept back to cover, but the brave and resourceful old Ewing shifted his command to the left, crossed the ditch, pressed forward, and ere long we saw his men scrambling up the outer face of the bastion and his colors planted near the top of the rebel works.